


Gold Dust Woman

by forwarduntovictory



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 04:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forwarduntovictory/pseuds/forwarduntovictory
Summary: One cannot hold the power of infinity without paying a price first. The collector has finally come for Wanda Maximoff.





	1. Chapter 1

The greatest tragedy is that she is dead for no more than six minutes. _One minute for infinity_ , a soft voice tells her. It's warm and comforting, the voice of a father who knows only too well the agonizing pain stabbing her heart, but she hates it regardless.

 _I don't want to live_ , she tells it brazenly. Prior to this—to being dead both inside and out—she wouldn't dare voice this to anyone that wasn't Pietro. But her brother is dead, dead, dead, and she is very much alive. Painfully, agonizingly so.

 _Let me rest_ , she begs. No tears fall. There are none to. She has spent them all when Viz—she can't finish the thought.

There is pain in remembering, and she remembers too well. That is her curse, she thinks thirty seconds after breathing for the first time. The Mind Stone plays tricks, it deceives, it digs up every little thing you bury deep within and throws it back in your face the moment you relax. Accepting the inevitable wasn't enough apparently. Now she is tormented not by breath but by the shadow of it.

 _You are bound to him_ , the voice whispers, _just as he is bound to you_ _as are all who crown themselves gods._

The irony would have killed her if she hadn't already died before. Chained to her lover’s murderer. The truth is ash in her mouth, wilting her tongue and scratching her throat. No, not truth. The screams. The rage.

It simmers and boils, and the next thirty seconds are spent clawing at her skin. Her clothing protects her from the majority of it but where skin shows there are angry red cracks that pulse with the power of the universe. They will heal when she isn't looking, and she'll think that that is the real tragedy.

“Why won't you kill me?” she rages upon realization that she is not alone. She never has been. The thought churns her stomach and it's all she can do not to vomit. This isn't how it was supposed to be. She's not supposed to be alive so, “why?”

Why? Why? _Why?_

She knows why. For all his power and might, for all the terror he caused, for all he professed to know, he doesn't understand how the little human girl that had held him off for so long appeared beside him from dust. He stares long and hard before gently caressing her hair. She recoils violently, lurching back, but is held in place by his other hand. It sprawls the entirety of her back and she never felt so little or powerless. Not even when confronted with Banner. The Gauntlet digs into bruises she didn't know she had. When he has his full, he cups her cheek and jaw.

“I was wrong,” He admits softly. There is no remorse, no sorrow at the declaration. There is only curiosity.

She can't help but snap, “mad men like you are always wrong.”

He doesn't snap his fingers, doesn't tear her head from her shoulders, or squash her head like a grape. He cradles her like a fine porcelain doll. She feels anything but fine. Her edges are frayed, her nerves even more so. She is naked before the man who stole everything she ever held dear.

“I did everything that was needed to ensure that this universe continued. I did what needed to be done,” he says in the same whisper.

His hand leaves her face. Wearily, he glances out across the land. Then the sky. It's beautiful. The streaks of blues and reds and golds are breathtaking as they are horrifying. She doesn't even know if she's on Earth anymore.

“You will come to understand.”

She can't. She won't. She isn't a monster. Not like him. So, with all the fury clawing beneath her skin, she attacks. There are no hand motions, no whispers of magic words far more ancient than those even the so-called Sorcerer Supremes know. There is nothing but agony and rage and screams she didn't know she still had. It lashes out in vibrant, scalding red waves. For six minutes, she is nothing and everything. And she sees. T’Challa with his ancestors and a Panther that is as beautiful as it is regal, Sam Wilson flying high with a man with the same wings, Fury with two eyes and a team the howls, Maria Hill and a woman that is everything she had grown to be, the boy with the spider suit sitting across the table from a middle aged man, and a young pirate who cries and cries all alone for a woman would cannot be with him in this hell. But among them she doesn't see Viz, or even the abomination Ultron.

Then, in a flurry of blue, Pietro stands before her. She doesn't cry, not in the maelstrom of red, but does stumble and sway. His arms are around her in an instance. They don't lift her up but do set her onto the ground. Like a toddler, she clings to this spectre wearing her brother's face. He buries his nose into her tangled, scarlet locks and breathes. He shudders against her. Then whispers, “you shouldn't be here.”

She doesn't know where here is.

“Not you,” he murmurs so softly she strains to hear. He rocks them, cradling her and touching her as if he can't believe his eyes. But they're not the same blue as before. They shine like crystals—like infinity. She recoils from him.

She knows those eyes. She knows. He, too, is connected to infinity, to the faceless, bodiless father saying, _the mind cannot stay with space. Madness will tear you apart._

She doesn't care. Not for the voice or living. Only for Pietro who is her better half, her true half. But as the voice warned, he's gone from her arms in another flurry of _blue_ , standing just a few feet away. Torment and love battle on his face.

“Pietro,” she whimpers.

His eyes snap to her.

“Time was always our enemy,” he replies cryptically, coolly. His face softens. Once more he is the boy she spent so many nights crying over. “But you were always your worst.”

Her mouth opens to ask what that means when the red is sucked away and purple is all she sees. It obscures her vision, seeping into every aspect of her being, and then there's pain. Sharp, abrupt pain that has her screaming for a different reason. She tries to raise her hands to stop it but then realizes that's where the pain is. Thanos all but crushes them in one hand. His other, the Gauntlet, is pressed to her head. It's a rainbow of colors absorbing the red. When he's finished and the only red is in her eyes and clothes, he releases her with a grunt.

The first thing she does is vomit. There's not much but the bile burns her throat. She relishes the pain. The second thing she does is curl away from Thanos’ questing hand. It's tender and tentative, searching her for any remaining power. Not that she has any left. His fingers ghost over her hair. Then his fingers pinch the back of her neck. Firmly but not enough to hurt. He uses it as leverage to pluck her from the ground. He doesn't release her until he's certain she can stand on her own. Hatred alone keeps her upright.

His head cocks, and his eyes narrow.

“I was going to kill you for that,” he confesses, low and even.

And for the first time, she sees the damage she's done. His shirt barely clings to him and burns the size of her fists are scattered across his chest and arm. The hand he used to restrain her is the worst. It's gnarled and nearly black. It's a miracle that it functions.

“But now I understand,” there's a hint of a smile on his face, “Entropy.”


	2. Fighting the Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you fight when you want to die?

He doesn't release her from his sight until she all but begs to have privacy to use the bathroom. He doesn't trust her and the small inkling that he might fear her dies when what she knows to be the collar they used in the Raft materializes around her neck dies. No powers, no threat. He smiles openly this time. Amused with himself or content with the knowledge that she can no longer burn him, he gives her the privacy she craves.

Alone in the pitiful excuse for a cabin, she allows herself to sit and ponder. She doesn't think of Viz or Pietro—they are too gone, too _dead_ —but she does think of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. Madmen in their own right but ones that aren't dead. She would have seen them, she reasons.

It's only after she's relieved herself and the pain is but a whimper does she allow herself a single moment to imagine. Steve Rogers would never leave her behind. Glasgow, the Raft, she knows he will come with Natasha. Perhaps Stark would come, too. She's seen him on television, seen the way regret bears down upon his shoulders like a great boulder. A modern day Sisyphus. She thinks vaguely of the others: Antman, Okoye, Banner, and the not-God Thor. Of all the misery on that battlefield, it was Thor's she felt the most. It nearly overwhelmed her in its potency. Then she thinks, _it is his fault_. His fault for the scepter, for Loki, for Thanos, for Viz. She hates herself for it, but as she washes her hands of blood and grime and vomit, the thought lingers.

It lingers until there is a rap on the wooden door that jolts Wanda out of her skin.

“Come out, child,” Thanos says, not muffled at all by the wood. “There's nothing to gain in hiding behind a wooden door.”

She seethes, digging her fingers into the sink, but relents. Familiarity tells her obeying is less painful than resistance. There are no straight-jackets here, no taunting of those loved so close but so far away. There is only this damned collar and a monster of a man more than willing to snap her neck should she defy him. That is if he didn't utilize the collar first. If he wouldn't get off at seeing her withering in agony as volt after volt spasmed her body. One of the guards had. In the Raft. He liked seeing just how much she could dance when no one else was around, when the screams of her friends reached her but their hands couldn't. She hadn't killed him but the ocean had. But there was no ocean here, no Steve Rogers, no Natasha, not even Stark. There was only her in a broken down bathroom on a planet she wasn't sure was Earth.

Steeling herself—she is the Scarlet Witch, an Avenger… a survivor—, she dries her hands on her jacket and slowly opens the door. To her surprise, Thanos isn't looming at the door. He isn't even looking in her direction. Instead, seated on a lone sofa, he sits fiddling with the Gauntlet, looking perfectly at ease for someone whose weight bends the sofa's frame so it scrapes against the hardwood floor. He turns it once over, then twice, eyeing it with a scrutiny that suggests it best not to comment on its state. His arm, she notes, is a little better than before. It's the same shade as his chest, a nasty but healing purple.

Pride flares in her chest at the sight. The God of Thunder had been the only one to injure the Titan, and now Wanda is on that short list as well. A small but significant detail. The Titan can still bleed, even with the power of the universe at his fingertips.

It takes exactly six minutes for him to stop fiddling with the Gauntlet and six seconds for him to look at her. It takes what little will power she has left and buckets of rage to stop from fidgeting.

“You remind me of my daughter,” he starts slowly. Even with the collar, she can hear the raw underline of grief. It only makes the fires in her stomach worse. “Strong-willed, dangerous… beautiful in her anger.”

He looks to the Stones.

“So, I will give you a choice, Wanda Maximoff.”

She tenses, and for a second, she thinks he didn't see. But he did because he rises with the groans of spent wood. His gait is an amble, determined yet languid— _just like Ultron’s_ , she thinks unwittingly. He stops short of her so as to appear massive yet approachable, an illusion of choice.

“Which shall you pick?” he asks.

She licks her lips, eyes the giant and then the Gauntlet. His eyes don't follow, but she knows he knows what she's looking at. Unconsciously, she leans towards it—towards _him_ —but jerks back as if touching a scalding plate. The shadow of power tingles her fingers. How easy it would be to kill him, she thinks, gazing at the Gauntlet. How fast he would be dead, dead, _dead_. But something in her stops her.

 _You cannot handle it_ , the fatherly voice whispers. _Your mind will burn_.

 _Any alternative to living_ , she wants to reply but doesn't. Hatred stills her tongue. Patience is a game she knows well. It was in the concrete walls of Baron Strucker’s Hydra facility, in the stones of the church in Sokovia, in the pristine tile walls of the Avengers estate. Now it is here, wherever here is, and Wanda can taste the madness that comes with it. It draws her taut like a bowstring.

“I won't play your games,” she tells him with the confidence of an Avenger and the rage of a survivor.

 _You already won_ , she wants to tell him. Why take more from her when there is nothing left to take? Why? Why? _Why_?

Thanos’ eyes crinkle even more. Then he has her by the throat. Gasping, she swallows her choke to stare him dead in the eyes. She won't go out as an animal.

This amuses him. Everything she does amuses him, she thinks, and the rage of it has her kicking her legs feebly but with enough umph for him to get that being manhandled by a grape isn't on her bucket list.

“No, you won't,” he admits. “It's not in your nature to. You'd rather fight me to the bitter end, wouldn't you? Like an animal. Even after all I've done for you.”

“Go… to hell,” she grits out.

The amusement drops. He pulls her in closer until he's all she sees. Once more he cocks his head.

“I did what was needed. I don't expect you to understand yet.”

“Why? Because I'm human?”

He is nose-to-nose with her. His breath is hot against her face. So much hotter than any human's.

“Because you have never loved,” growls Thanos. He releases her and watches her drop to her knees with a thud. “You think you know what love is. You think you were in love with the machine, but you weren't. You deceived yourself. You deceived your mind.”

He crouches to grasp her by a chunk of her hair.

“That is why the Time Stone worked. You knew all along that it was a lie.”

She's fire clawing at his fist, but he takes no notice. There is no threat now. Nothing but a shell of a woman. She isn't Natasha, who could break free, nor Steve, who would fight until he dies. She is Wanda Maximoff, and exhaustion kicks in six minutes later. He grasps her still by her hair until every muscle relaxes and her eyes are glued to the floorboards. Methodically, he rakes his fingers through her hair, smoothing out the knots with surprising ease.

“I will set you free,” he finally says.

Her eyes never waver.

“I will teach you.”

A finger trails down to hook the collar.

“We have all the time in the world.”

With a sharp tug, he forces her to meet his gaze. Wolfishly, selfishly, he devours the sight of her. She knows it only too well, for it had been on Ultron’s metallic face, on Strucker’s as well.

A madman's stare for a mad man.

She almost laughs.

But the oxygen flees her lungs as a blue circle flashes into existence behind them. It takes only a few milliseconds for the cabin to give way to a massive, grey chamber. She doesn't tear her eyes from Thanos, doesn't dare look at what's hissing and clawing all around her. She knows the beasts, knows what they've done only a few short hours ago. And for the first time since breathing, Wanda is petrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come.


	3. Chapter 3: Black Mamba

They don't kill her. They don't even look at her. The Chitauri are vermin scrambling around trying to adjust to the abrupt presence of their master, but as they do so, they spare not one glance at. It's deliberate, a means to say to her that she was less than those that brought doom to entire worlds. She pretends not to care, not to worry as they claw and hiss and vibrate around her, the very same beasts that tried to kill her not too long ago. Her entire world is Thanos.

He doesn't spare them a glance either.

If he sees the shallow gulps she takes as she forces down terror’s hefty weight, he doesn't comment. Instead, the Mad Titan surveys the room with a careful eye. Something dark smears the base of the stone throne seated in the center of the room. It catches his eye for a long moment before he turns to her.

A shadow of an emotion she cannot begin to comprehend flickers across his face,too open for any sane man yet too brief for the insane. He lumbers closer until they're a breath away.

“I have trained all my children here,” he says matter-of-factly. She recalls his children well and  wonders if he knows what she'd done to one and what she ached to do to the other. “Here you will train as well.”

“I will never be your dog,” she spits.

The beginnings of a smug smile curve his lips. He doesn't move to strike her as Strucker had nor stroke her cheek as Ultron had. He stands a God, absolute.It breaks her just a fragment more. Then, with a satisfied smirk, he turns his back to her and summons forth one of the creatures. It’s larger than the others, bipedal and grotesquely gray. When it shudders, there lays in it  sits an energy that thrums to the erratic beating of its dual hearts.It doesn't spit or hiss or even whine before its master. All limbs are prostate and reverence clamps its maw shut. It doesn't look to her, doesn't acknowledge anyone but Thanos.

“Have her brought to my chambers,” he says.

His words are a bucket of ice water dousing her. She scrambles back, hands snapping to the collar. The cold metal digs into the soft pads of her fingers, and try as she might, she is unable to yank it off.

“No,” she croaks softly as the creature lumbers closer. “No, no, no.”

It latches onto her forearm, and she lashes out as only she could—by jabbing her left fist straight into its eyes. It's like hitting concrete, only harder.Her knuckles throb, but she brings her fist back before it can react and jabs it again, moving more of her weight into her. The chautari releases her with a shrill cry and looks to Thanos for guidance. She takes that opportunity to pivot her left foot, bring her fists up, and hits it in the neck with a clean back leg roundhouse. It collapses, unsure and in pain, but Wanda thinks little of it. She's already back in the fighting stance Natasha drilled into her and warily eyes the shadows. They scurry around her, chirping and barking in their language. They're mocking her, she knows.

The screeching stops with a single raise of the Titan’s hand. He observes her as he did the throne. As if she is the dark smudge. The broken Gauntlet shimmers as he lets the hand drop to his side. Wanda follows his eyes down the length of her body and then to her knuckles where red and purple fight for dominance and the throbbing is one of the few reminders that this is real.

He assesses the simpering chitauri groveling at his feet. With one massive hand, he grasps it by the head and squeezes. Blue blood and brains erupt and splatter the ground and his hand. He releases the carcass. It crumples to the ground.

“Very well,” he says. It oozes of amusement and pride, a collage of mockery. “The hard way it is.”

With a resounding snap of the Gauntlet, the world bleeds around them. The next breath has her tumbling into hard black marble. Her shoulder hits first, and she doesn't have the strength nor time to bite down her cry as pain jolts across her chest and arm. It takes a moment for the pain to ease into a throb. When it does, she crawls to a stand.

“Remove them,” he tells her. 

She blinks owlish.

The Gauntlet rises. Instinctively, she flinches away, prepared to feel the full force of infinity but nothingness comes instead. Its ugly head mocks her while the Titan’s words dawn on her. Rage and horror battle for control as she takes a step back.

“No.”

And another.

“Don’t touch me. Don't touch me!”

It becomes a mantra with her steps until her calves collide with something firm. Her first mistake is looking at what it is that she hit—if she could use it against him. If there is anything besides her aching fist and shin. But there's nothing there but suspended bioluminescent lamps that drown her in softs blues and a massive bed that resembles more a sacrificial slab than a bed. The rest of the room is voided. Purposefully, she thinks. He doesn't want her to kill him in his sleep.

Her second mistake is turning her back on Thanos. He doesn't near her, doesn't touch her. He has no need. She feels her clothes disintegrate into bubbles—he mocks her still—with little warning until she is naked in body and soul.

Shivers and tremors rake her body as she thinks,  _ this is it. _ It is another mantra as she readies herself for it. She won't go without a fight. Won't allow him to steal what little remains of her dignity. By tooth and nail she will kill him, she swears. But it never comes. Tentatively, she faces her captor. He stands in the same spot, lips curled. Amusement or curiosity, she cannot tell, doesn't want to. A man's cruelty is universal, his hunger for power an innate trait.

Then, the grime and dirt and blood that tangles her hair, smears her body, and reminders her that the battle fought on the battlefield was only a prelude to the war for her body and soul, evaporates just the same as her clothes as if it'd never been there to begin with. Numbing anger and terror—Wanda knows she'll feel nothing else—shoots through her. Then, she is clothed once more in her own clothes with a twist of the Gauntlet and a flash of red. Confusion replaces the terror as anger simmers.

She takes a step to the right. He doesn't move. She takes another step and another until she's on the other side of the room. She readies to take another step when her sleeve dissolves into bubbles. It creeps up her arm, baring her shoulder. Perplexion keeps her rooted in place as it continues.

“Fascinating, isn't it? The Reality Stone's range is entirely dependent on the user,” he explains simply. “The further you stray,” her clothes were all but gone, “the lesser the effect.”

In the blue light, he is every bit the monster under the bed. Like a black mamba, he waits for her to make the first move. Very much the petrified mouse, she shivers before inching closer. One step. Then two. Slowly, her clothes become tangible, a heavy but treacherously comforting weight. Wanda wants to tear it from her skin and watch it burn, but it stands the only barrier—no matter how flimsy—between her and Thanos.

When she is a breath away, he cups her chin and inspects her.

“One day, you will come to me,” he says, all but purring, “and when that day comes you will know pleasure unlike anything you have ever known before.”

Disgust coils her stomach and jerks her head away.

“I will never be your whore,” she hisses.

Unperturbed, he laughs, “you will change with time. I will forge from the ruins a warrior without parallel. You will be everything they tried to stop, everything they feared.” Something she couldn't name filled his eyes. “You will be  _ glorious." _

She laughs. It's dry and bitter. He takes it with a twisted, fatherly smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a little harder to write. With such few cinematic dialogue, Wanda and Thanos' characters might be a tad OOC.

**Author's Note:**

> This is Thanos x Wanda. It's a very rare ship, and one without it's hardships. This won't end happy for anyone.


End file.
